Abschied

Made just after and the same year as his first film, the masterpiece Men on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag, the last German silent film co-written by his brother Curt and a certain Billy Wilder), ABSCHIED is a gem of a bittersweet comedy by Robert Siodmak (born August 8, 1908 in Dresden). He would later direct several major films in Hollywood, including the first film noir masterpiece, The Killers (1946), which would reveal Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.

While Men on Sunday masterfully closed the German silent era, ABSCHIED offered the famous German film production company UFA its first sound film. After some local successes, Siodmak found himself under attack from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1933, and he chose to go into exile in France. There, he pursued a brilliant career for six years with films such as Le sexe faible La Vie Parisienne, La crise est finie (with Danielle Darrieux), Mollenard (with Harry Baur), and Pièges with Maurice Chevalier and Erich von Stroheim. But in 1939, he had to leave again and goes to the USA and Hollywood, where he became one of the masters of thrillers and film noir: Flight By Night, The Killers, Phantom Lady, The Suspect, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, The Dark Mirror, The Spiral Staircase, etc., with the notable exception of The Crimson Pirate, a sort of parody of the pirate film genre starring Burt Lancaster.

Siodmak returned to Germany (West Germany, Federal Republic) in 1955 and directed a landmark film: Die Ratten (The Rats) with Maria Schell and Curt Jürgens, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival that same year. He followed this with the remarkable The SS Strikes at Night (1957). He then alternated between other films shot in Great Britain and France, such as Katia (starring Romy Schneider)...

Filmed in a single location - a vast apartment where the multiple rooms are rented to various people, the landlady also living there - and in near real time (an early evening), ABSCHIED sparkles with rhythm without a break. It brings to mind Renoir and René Clair. The story revolves around a young couple (he alone lives there) whose survival is endangered by a misunderstanding. All the characters are perfectly written and vivid. It must be said that the screenplay was co-written by Irma von Cube and Emeric Pressburger, both making their film debuts, the latter of whom would become Michael Powell's inseparable partner for several great classics in Great Britain. These characters are also portrayed by excellent actors and actresses.

Despite the cramped setting, the shots are remarkably well composed and framed. A sequence with off-camera dialogue is particularly sumptuous. The film's atmosphere is both charming and whirlwind.

Let's conclude by highlighting the quality of the cinematography, courtesy of the great Eugen Schüfftan (inventor of the effect that bears his name, first introduced in The Nibelungen, then developed in Metropolis, two works by Fritz Lang in 1924 and 1927, and already at work on Men on Sundays), as well as the soundtrack, whether it's the various sound effects (telephone, vacuum cleaner, clock, outside street noises, etc.) or the entirely diegetic music, played on the piano by one of the tenants, a pianist by trade.

Don't hesitate to go and discover this little gem !

After his success with ''People on Sunday'', director Robert Siodmak made the first talking picture for UFA in quite a similar fashion. While ''People on Sunday' focuses on the life of four regular citizens of pre-war Germany during a Sunday and shows the love and pleasure of daily life, 'Abschied'' takes a more cynical approach and depicts a day in the life of mostly poor people who live in the same building with main focus on the couple Hella and Peter Winkler.

The main conflict arises when Hella finds out that her boyfriend wants to move out but hasn't told her anything about it. He then tells her that he got a job offer which would pay him enough money for them to be married. After this conflict is resolved, another emerges because of a misunderstanding and so on. This is more ore less how the movie plays out until it leads to a bittersweet ending.

Since this was the first sound film produced by the UFA, they had to experiment and used it at practically every instant they could, whether it was necessary or not. Because of this, the piano player, one of the few characters, felt shoe-horned in and didn't contributed anything to the film. This what the movie lacked in the first place: Developed characters, which is really a shame since the cast is small anyway and the whole film takes place in a confined space (one building) were most characters basically have to interact with each other.

The acting was fine for the most part, except for Aribert Mog, who played the main character Peter. His acting was atrocious in some scenes. Other weird decisions were the camera placement during a dialog between the couple, were the upper body of Peter completely covered Hellas face.

All in all it was a fine little movie with an interesting theme, nut also without it's flaws

One of the very first sound movies. Sound is everywhere during the whole film: the vacuum-cleaner, the ringing of the phone, the piano... Everybody speaks but no-one hears, except maybe the cleaning woman who is presented as deaf. The story takes place in a flat where several destinies cross but may be never meet. It is a very bitter description of a microcosm: all the characters are funny, but desperately helpless and hopeless.